Ramble On
I did an interview for Gambling Online Magazine a couple of weeks back. The list of questions was fairly broad and amongst them was this little gem that's been on my mind a bit since;
“How do you keep in top shape to be a better player?”
It is oh so easy to just move on from one comp to the next in this game, without ever really reflecting on the key hands that could have been played better or should have been passed.
I went out for dinner with Andy Black in Amsterdam last year - now here’s a guy who really does work on his game and he gave me a few pointers on better pre-match preparation and post-match analysis. God only knows what I’d have answered if it weren’t for that conversation. Talking of post-match analysis I really enjoyed reading Andy Ward’s thoughts on his WPT debut. There’s a link to his blog(s) on the side.
Interestingly, Andy (Black) used to do a bit of canoeing himself and we sort of promised to do the Liffey Descent in an open candian boat this September (worryingly he was sober). We’ll see how good his memory is.
Well it shouldn’t surprise but during this curfew I have been significantly upping my online comp sample size. I played about twenty five over the past five nights, ranging from $50 to $500 and rather frustratingly I bubbled or thereabouts in three, made six semi-finals and just one final, out ninth for a whopping £240.
Big stack or small, it mattered not as it all went poo-flavoured, like clockwork, at the last two tables. Don’t get me wrong, I mean this represents a significant upswing in my online stats - I’ll crack on this week and see if we can get out of it…
Back to reality then with some live musings and my exit hand from the Bolton leg of the UKPT:
It had been a pretty dull first four hours but I’d just started to get going during level 5 and I was feeling very comfortable and full of confidence; I really fancied I could win the whole thing.
At 150/300 and sitting on 18k I raised to 800 with Jc-10c. Lawrence Gosney called and then Theo Dalton made it another 2500 to go from the BB. Theo’s a very solid player and whilst I really couldn’t see him re-raising into the two of us without a big hand I felt like a punt and figured Lawrence would come in behind me.
What I didn’t take into account though was that with three of us now in a re-raised pot, the pot was getting very big which meant there would be little room for manoeuvre after the flop.
Well the flop came down 9,J,Qc and Theo led out for 4k into a 10k pot. Sitting on 14k, the 10k re-raise all-in was just too tempting to me and I pushed. Lawrence ducked and after the longest of dwells Theo called with K-K. I hit a ten but that was no longer an out and I was home within two hours.
Whilst I had no regrets with the play of the hand at the time, with hindsight I didn’t need to gamble everything against an effectively pot committed tight guy at that stage of the tournament. Busy players tend to get more opportunities to acquire chips than most and I’m sure I could have found plenty more better spots with less risk.
The other tournament I played was a 500 freeze-out at Luton two weeks back. Whilst chip-wise I never really got going, I felt I got the balance between carefree abandon and proper tournament strategy just about right; all being well I’ll grant this mindset another airing at the Broadway’s main event next week.